By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware of the latest hot internet trend: using ChatGPT to render Studio Ghibli-style art out of existing photos. So-called fans of classic anime like Kiki’s Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke have generally been delighted at the ability to transform images of themselves and their friends into characters who would look right at home in these classic films. Sadly, those loving this Ghibli AI have revealed themselves as anime’s biggest hypocrites because Hayao Miyazaki, the genius behind the studio, once pronounced that AI was “an insult to life itself.”
Hayao Miyazaki And The Ghibli AI Controversy
The animation legend behind Ghibli wasn’t talking about ChatGPT when he discussed AI…this was actually back in 2017, when he was shown a more basic example of AI animation. As with the fans breathlessly sharing their own Ghibli AI makeovers, the man showing Miyazaki was excited about the possibilities this technology held for the future. However, Miyazaki emphasized that “I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all” and that “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
What does this mean for the legions of Ghibli lovers who have taken to flooding the internet with their AI abominations rendered in Miyazaki’s famous style? For one thing, these fans are complete hypocrites. The animator’s thoughts about AI have been floating around the internet for nearly a decade, so anyone who really loves his work should already know that the man behind the animation they claim to love hates the technology they are using to give themselves an anime makeover.
Additionally, those who are so in love with Studio Ghibli AI don’t seem to really care about whether Miyazaki or his studio granted OpenAI permission to copy an entire visual style. While AI “artists” hate to hear this, there is absolutely nothing special about getting a machine to use its stolen work and then spit out a soulless little copy. Again, if these fans actually cared about the animator they claim to love, they wouldn’t wholeheartedly embrace stealing his work and using the technology he hates to create an inferior clone.
And while the man behind Ghibli wasn’t talking about ChatGPT specifically, his comments about AI from 2017 are very relevant to our current discourse about this technology. You see, he was shown an AI animation of a monster with a head for a leg, and the man presenting it told Miyazaki that this could be useful for creating a monster in a zombie video game.
In response, the animator started talking about a disabled friend of his and mentioned, “I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting” because “whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is.” He concluded that “if you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it” and not rely on a computer to do it for you.
Hayao Miyazaki is a genius for many reasons beyond his Studio Ghibli animations, and in this case, he immediately clocked the two biggest problems with AI art. First, art is an expression of human feeling, so there’s no real reason to watch, say, a sad or scary character brought to life by something that has never experienced sadness or pain. Second, literally nothing keeps an AI “artist” from actually learning how to draw except for a pigheaded unwillingness to just pick up a pencil and learn.
Studio Ghibli remains the gold standard of anime, and ChatGPT (for better or for worse) remains the gold standard of AI. But those rushing to give themselves a Miyazaki makeover using this shiny new toy should consider just how much they are personally insulting the greatest living animator in the world. His movies are about the importance of appreciating magic in the world…would it really be so hard for their fans to not completely destroy the magic, one artist at a time?
